1. The Challenge
We partnered with a research group on an NIMHD/NIH-funded initiative to disseminate a multi-year, community-based HIV prevention research program. The original program had already proven successful. It was a religiously tailored, multi-level health intervention delivered through African American churches, one that guided congregations to plan, implement, and evaluate their own HIV prevention efforts, including access to testing and linkage to care.
The task was to translate that work into training for clinicians and church health liaisons that could scale nationally without losing what made the program succeed. That meant more than converting a curriculum into slides and videos. The energy, trust, and cultural fluency of an in-person, faith-based program had to survive inside a format built for self-paced learners. And the subject matter carries real sensitivity: HIV status, sexuality, testing, and a documented history of mistrust toward medical research among African American communities. Any training that failed to earn credibility on that history before asking congregations to act would fail at the one thing the original program got right.
There was also a practical, grant-driven constraint underneath the creative one. The intervention had proven effective in person, church by church, over years of research. NIH dissemination goals meant the model now had to reach clinicians and health liaisons who would never sit in the same room as the original research team, and reach them consistently. The training had to hold up at that scale without turning into generic e-learning. On a screen, it still needed to feel like it belonged to the program that had built real trust from the pulpit.
2. The Solution
We built a fully interactive online course delivered through a learning management system (LMS), with built-in tools to survey participants, monitor engagement, and gather evaluation data. That mattered because the program was structured around a plan-implement-evaluate cycle for each participating church. The LMS let the research team track that cycle digitally, at scale, instead of relying on manual, in-person data collection.
Instead of static reading modules, we shot original video on location in real churches and community health centers, with purpose-built backgrounds to keep the training visually alive. We captured sermons delivered to full congregations, interviewed people living with HIV, and filmed health teams running the intervention in real community settings. We paired that footage with custom animation and mixed media that explained HIV transmission and the biology of the virus in plain, human terms, plus interactive data visualizations that made the public health statistics concrete and reinforced why prevention and testing matter.
A dedicated track walked church health liaisons through opening conversations with congregation members, using empowering, non-stigmatizing language, and directly addressing the historical harms that had driven a wedge between researchers and the African American community. That turned one of the most sensitive parts of the program into an entry point for trust rather than a barrier. Throughout the build, we worked closely with the research group, sharing interactive documents and running continuous review cycles to keep every module grounded in the original evidence base.
3. The Impact
The finished course is one of the most visually striking and emotionally resonant trainings we've produced. More importantly, it works as a genuine extension of the original research, not a diluted stand-in. The LMS's integrated survey and monitoring tools give the research group a scalable way to collect evaluation data and track engagement, supporting both the plan-implement-evaluate framework the in-person program depended on and the NIH dissemination goals behind the grant.
Church health liaisons now have a repeatable, self-paced way to build the same conversational and outreach skills the original program taught face-to-face. A proven, culturally tailored HIV prevention approach can now reach congregations far beyond where the research team could travel, with the sensitivity and trust-building that made it work in the first place.
4. Let's Talk About Your Project
Have a community-based or grant-funded research program that needs to become a scalable digital training? Let's talk about your dissemination goals.